EnviroMall in the community
Battery Recycling Initiative
The Mall shopping centres have teamed up with leading battery manufacturer Varta and recycling provider BatteryBack to trial end-of-life battery recycling scheme for shoppers, one of the first of its kind in UK shopping centres.
Since February this year, collection points have been provided inside a number of The Mall shopping centres, for visitors to dispose of their old batteries. The scheme has been designed to coincide with the UK’s launch of the Batteries Directive, a new EU-wide ruling that imposes strict targets on the manufacturing, collection and recycling of batteries.
The Batteries Directive aims to cut down on the 600 million waste batteries that end up in landfill each year. As part of the EnviroMall initiative consumers are being encouraged to help play their part by recycling old batteries, and Varta will be providing free batteries to the first 1,000 people in each shopping centre who recycle their old ones.
Every year, the average UK household disposes of more than 21 batteries as part of their general waste. This translates to over 22 tonnes of waste batteries sent to landfill annually. With experts predicting that the UK will run out of landfill space in the next few years, increasing battery recycling rates is a crucial way of trying to reverse this trend.
Missing People’s ‘Come Home for Christmas’ campaign
The Mall helped to raise over £10,000 for charity Missing People through an appeal which ran in shopping centres during the Christmas period. Customers were encouraged to recycle old and unwanted mobile phone handsets in specially installed recycling stations located in The Mall shopping centres across the UK. Each handset recycled raised at least £3.75 for Missing People. The campaign was launched on GMTV to encourage viewers to help Missing People, which provides support for missing children and vulnerable adults.
Click on the link below to see what we did during EnviroMall Week 2009.
